#082: Why Most Founders Get Go-to-Market Wrong — Aaron Schwartz on Building Orita from Scratch

I think like number one is like focus is the main thing. Just focus like one thing at a time. And like you want to do more. It's not like living in the future, like get to chapter 3. It's not even that. It's more just like doing a great job on the thing that matters. Like keep the main thing the main thing. I think that is just very helpful for a founder. I think the other thing that has always helped me and I tend to tell founders is like whatever your problems are, just share them and share them very publicly, very quickly. Even if you think it's like related to IP or differentiation for you, like you and I could talk about like the deepest secrets of Platter and I'm not going to copy the business, but I might know somebody who actually can help you. And so it's like being really transparent and authentic with the issues you're having, not like in BS way, like not on like LinkedIn, like it's been really hard to work, but actually be like, hey, this is a concrete problem I have. I don't know how to solve it. Like people will come out of the woodwork. And I think if you're going to live and breathe your company, like it is okay to live and breathe it when you're out for a drink or playing hoops or whatever it is.

Welcome back to Season 4, Episode 5 of the Turning Pro Podcast. Today we have Aaron Schwartz, who's the co-founder and co-CEO of Areeda. Thanks for joining us. Is it Areeda AI?

It's Areeda, but we can go Areeda AI so people know we're cool.

It's 2025. If you're not— if you don't have AI involved in the name, people are bearish on the business.

My co-founder actually bought the domain 3 or 4 years ago, and he bought AI instead of ML because AI was $10 cheaper. So we think of ourselves much more as a machine learning team than—

Do you own.ml also?

I don't think— he was super cheap, man. I don't think so.

We own, we own platter.ai.

Uh, valuation just went up.

We have the.ai,.com,.co, and.org.

Okay then. So we're not.xxx.

Uh, no, I didn't. And then what was the other? The.eth. There was, there was a moment in time where people thought those were actually going to be valuable.

One day it might come back.

We'll see. Um, I mean, Aaron, you've been in and around this ecosystem for longer than I've been in my professional career. I know you scratch your forehead because you're like, oh shit, what is he about to say?

Alive? But I'm glad with professional.

Uh, I don't think that's the case. Um, but I think it's, it's interesting, uh, to get your perspective on this as someone who's only a couple years into this because you've seen every single shape and size of this industry. For a couple reasons. One, just based on the sheer amount of time that you've been doing it, but also because you were on the brand side and you're on the software side and everything in between. Uh, so I think there's a lot of things to unpack in this conversation, but maybe just, uh, you can start really quickly to give people a background on what you're currently working on.

Sure. Uh, the company's Arita, or arita.ai. Um, we build AI customer segmentation. So brands give us their data, we help them understand who wants to hear from them, who doesn't. You kind of mentioned my background as a brand owner. 99% of brands will decide, I'm gonna send Ben this email because he clicked at some point in the last 90 days. But there's so much more data out there to help you understand, do you actually want to receive it or not? And when you do that, you start making more money, like being much more efficient with your sends. You stop creating unsubscribes by being annoying. And so it's like creates a bunch of long-term impact too.

Where, what was the moment for you when you realized that this was the thing that you were taking your next swing on?

So I actually wasn't the originator of this business. I was introduced as an advisor to two co-founders, DB and Zach.

I didn't know that.

They're both ML engineers, brilliant, should not be in e-commerce, should be at like OpenAI or Meta or anywhere else, but they've just been in commerce for about a decade and they were consulting and they came up, not came up with this, they kind of figured out this issue of like, was kind of inefficiency in marketing. They actually started with direct mail, which by the way, we now do direct mail also. But, and then they went into email and then one of my advisees is this guy, Matt Barr from Faring. So I think everybody knows Matt and he's like, hey, you should work with these guys. You should chat with them. They, I mean, his quote was like, they don't know how fucking good they are is what he said. And so I was introduced to help them with fundraising and just like some go-to-market basic stuff. And maybe a month or two in, they asked if I would join as a co-founder. And then a month or two later, I'd like, sprinted to work full-time for free because I was like, I've started enough companies and I was not going to be all in for the years that it takes unless I was fully bought in. And we— it was a really glorious, you know, 2 months. And then, you know, we're about a year and a half in. It's like November 2023 is when we really kicked off.

The serendipity of finding co-founders, it's such an interesting topic. I think my perspective on it is like you increase your surface area of luck by just meeting enough people.

100%.

But to like find someone who you're like, I can spend the next however many years talking to you every single day, building something with you. I mean, it's like the famous last thing, how many non-tech, and especially for both of us in this position, being the non-technical person, the famous last words, like I have a really good idea. Do you know a technical co-founder that I can meet and talk to?

Yeah. I think they looked at me and they're like, he's old and gray and like supposedly good at sales. So we don't know how to do that. DB always says that there were, raising money to go hire somebody like me. So why not Sucker, man? Uh, it's been awesome, man. I really enjoy it. And they are actually not only brilliant but also very kind. So like, it's been really fun. I mean, it's a year and a half in and it's a sprint, and I'm exhausted and all the things, but I actually like— I'm excited every day to wake up and do it.

I feel like we have very similar skill sets, but I'm just a couple years behind you in terms of flexing the muscle, and that being go-to-market.

Yeah, and basketball.

Basketball.

No, you're hockey.

I'm a hockey guy.

That's all right. So mostly overlap. Yeah, man. I always describe it as I'm nobody's dream VP of sales or marketing or partnerships or product. I'm decent at all of them and I also move very quickly. And so I think a superpower at the early stages and TBD if this is useful beyond early stages of assimilating a bunch of information and then moving very quickly to validate is a good idea or a bad idea is really useful. I think it is also extremely painful sometimes for my team when they see me kind of doing this and jumping in and out. But, uh, yeah.

How do you think about managing a network at scale?

How do you mean, like in terms of advisees or just like—

no, just like you're— when you're— when you're— because it's something that I think about a lot where it's like your superpowers go to market, a big part of go to market. So in the context of like selling for your own business, but also like I know, and we'll get into this, like you advise a ton of business businesses, and you obviously know a ton of people to help with a bunch of different things. Yeah, but it's like this mental model of like, how am I staying top of mind? How am I nurturing relationships? How am I bucketing people into like, are you someone that's going to be very close to me, or someone where like we're kind of friends, or someone where it's like it's straight transactions?

Yeah, I think I'm much less strategic. And in retrospect, like, I think I, you know, really, I don't have like a Rolodex or whatever the kids call it these days, like a planner. I don't know, uh, you know, I don't, I don't like take notes.

A CRM.

Yeah, I don't have my own personal CRM, though I have friends who do and I think it's like glorious and I'm way too lazy to do that.

I'll give a shameless plug. Have you heard of the company Clay?

Yeah, of course.

Okay, Zach was on the podcast.

Oh, Clay, I mean Clay's amazing.

Not Clay.Earth.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember that from, I mean, a couple years ago.

They've been around for like 5, I think.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was gonna say not the other Clay, not the drip campaign one.

Yeah, no.

Yeah, man, I remember when those guys launched. So I played around with a lot of CRMs and then like I would use, I mean, anything from Excel back in the day, right? I love LinkedIn. It's my best friend. I'm very old, which is delightful. You and me both. My parents, when I was growing up, volunteered for a lot of organizations and they would have like a bunch of people over and they would go out to dinner all the time. And I think I just got in a habit of like meeting a lot of adults and saying hello and introducing myself and I think it was always something where I was very comfortable with other people. I think I'm not great at going super duper deep, right? Like I'm very forgetful. I'm really good with faces. I can tell you like somebody who I played basketball with 23 years ago on 19th and 2nd, like I will remember that person in a very weird way. But I like care deeply about the interpersonal side. So it's actually like enjoyable. And even though I'm forgetful, like I'm actually genuinely interested in like, "Oh, tell me about your family." That's fun for me to have other people tell stories. I was a history major in college. I liked being told stories. Very long story short, in business school, I started helping other founders. And for a lot of people who I grew up with in Cleveland or I went to undergrad with at Columbia or whatever, I'd be like, "Oh, their entrepreneur friend." And so they'd be like, "Oh yeah, my friend Jenny is starting this thing. We chat with her." And my default answer was always yes. My framework is if I can spend an hour with you and save you 10 hours of your time, I'll spend that hour. I think what happened is for truly 7, 8 years, I would just have multiple conversations per week, every single week with random people. Once in a while it'd be repeat people. I, at some point in 2019, had a founder who I helped fundraise and then she raised $1.1 million after struggling and it was my network for a million of it. And I didn't get anything from it and it was really joyful. And then the next founder helped raise $6 million and I was like, hey, I'd like to be an advisor. And then he made me one. And then it became very easy to go down the advisory path. But I'll spend a lot of time with people upfront without asking for anything because I don't want to have a long-term commitment if it's not enjoyable for me. Anyway, yeah, I don't have any rhyme or reason. I just check in with folks.

What's your mental model around deciding how you're allocating your time to advising? So I think unless, unless you're getting like cash payment for it, like getting equity in 30 companies to dedicate time is like cool in theory, but like also knowing the numbers of venture, you actually can run the math on how many hours you spend where like, although it might be super fulfilling, the dollar return on it, unless something happens, like, do you, have you thought about that? Like, do you, do you vet these companies? I mean, I'm assuming the answer is obviously yes. Like you're going to spend your time where you think it's worth it. Early on, it was like, cool advisor share.

Let's go. I very quickly realized having had my own companies, 2 of them which I sold but for less than we raised, equity will turn into nothing. I tell every employee when they sign up for Redem, look, in 6 months your equity is not going to be worth zero, but it might be at some point. So don't sign up for the lottery ticket of startup equity. I obviously believe it's going to be worth a lot, but I think people get suckered in. It's a shiny object. So I actually hit a point a couple of years ago where I was consulting And I was getting paid a good amount of money. It was like $200 an hour from some companies, $250, $175, depending on the company. And I hated it. And I'd be like, you'd be like, Aaron, great. We need this sales deck by next Tuesday. I'd be like, Ben, cool. And I would just barely eke it out because it wasn't enjoyable. But if you gave me a 10th of a point in platter and I were to be like, oh, I think we should build a new sales deck, I would pull an all-nighter to deliver to you. And I don't know what it is for me that equity feels much more on the team and getting paid in cash isn't very— it's obviously important, right? So I'm not saying you don't need money, but it wasn't as fulfilling as being part of the team. So I just started only spending time for equity. And then I started spending 3 or 4 hours with founders before I'd say yes. But my framework is actually like, I assume it's going to go to zero no matter how good of a company it is. And so if I'm enjoying the time with the founder, Awesome. If I think I'm making an impact for them, great. And like what ends up happening is spending time with other founders. Like every time you and I talk, I'm thinking about something for my business, not directly. I'm not like trying to steal ideas, but it's like making me reprocess, oh, is there a different way for us to do go-to-market? Or is there a different way for me to do pricing? Or hey, should I just like go to profitability instead of— right? And so I actually find a ton of value from those conversations. With other people about their problems, and then it helps me kind of see mine with a new one.

That's actually a really interesting lens of like, you're getting paid, whether it be cash or equity, to just like take conversations and then future-proof what you're doing in your own day-to-day with your own business.

It sounds good in theory. I mean, unclear if I actually like—

yeah, that's what helps you sleep at night. You're like, why did I just do 6 advisor calls today?

What my wife is like, how come our earnings at the end of the year are always my earnings and you've got equity? You keep telling me. I'm like, Well, you know, it's worth it. I'm helping the youth of America.

What about like what— I know you've gone from builder to then like a ton of advising, then like wanting to go back into building. Like, is there an element of just like the season you're in in your own life that had anything to do with like whether it be family, other interests that had an impact on how you thought about where you wanted to spend your time?

Uh, so after, after Passport, which was like my third company but kind of second real one, I was able to take some secondary and I invested. I put money aside for my two daughters for their 529, like super funded. So like trying to proactively pay for college. Um, and then I spent the rest investing in startups because I wanted to prototype. Do I want to be an investor? Like, do I like it? And then am I any good at it? And I think the answer is like unclear if I like it, unclear if I'm any good at it. So, you know, I'm probably not like anybody's dream VC.

Yeah.

Uh, if Arita in 10 years is an incredible outcome, Sure. I will have done this multiple times now and obviously I've had other experiences too. For me, I was actually really content. My wife has a very, very intense job running a big product org. I was able to take that secondary. Some of my advisory shares, I think genuinely will be worth something someday. And so our daughters a couple years ago were 4 and 6, and it was really fun being the flexible parent and doing the advising afforded it. And I was absolutely in no rush because the thing I really realized is once I chose something full-time, it wasn't competing with the other options right then, it was competing with every future option. Being a founder of a company is brutal and a commitment. It's not like you can walk away in a year versus getting hired as a consultant or getting hired as the president of the company, whatever, which I've done in the past. It's like you can leave. Founder, you can't. You can, you shouldn't. That's not why you start it, obviously. And so for me on the season, it was like I was in no rush. I just like love my co-founders and I love the problem space we're in. And if I'm going to be all in on a business, I want to believe it can be, you know, $100 million business and then beyond. And I have complete conviction on that with us.

I have another question for you around that, which I think is something that I can tell you in, you know, 10, 20 years on my philosophy of how it changes the concept of being a first-time founder versus a multi-time founder. So my personal belief on it, given I've only really founded one actual company, so it's hard to have enough data to say if this is true or not, but my belief is that your first company oftentimes is very opportunistic in the sense that like you either have someone who asks you to be their partner, you found someone who's willing to pay you for a problem, you got super excited, just like jumped in and did it. Multi-time founder, you have a little bit more intentionality about like what you're building, why you're building it, who you're building it with because you've done it before and you learned all these things that you can't learn when you're naive. In any way other than doing it. Like, I'm— I do believe you can accelerate your learning curve by talking to people smarter than you. Hence the reason I even have a podcast. Like, it's a selfish thing, to be honest. But I do think there's a muscle that you can't flex in any other way than just doing.

Yeah.

So I'm curious to know from your lens, having done this multiple times, like, how do you think about, or how have you thought about analyzing a problem or starting a company given that you've done it multiple times versus the first time you did it?

Um, the first one was in business school and it was 4 MBAs, 0 engineers. It was just, it was just bad, but it was an all-out sprint for a year before we realized, okay, we can do better. The second one was completely opportunistic.

Did you shut the first one down after a year?

We sold it for like some equity in another company and I got my one and only tombstone, right? Like an acquisition. Cause I started my career in consulting, not in banking. Uh, so I never ever like closed the deal.

I was supposed to, I think I told you that.

Yeah. Um, and so, uh, the second one was at the end of business school and a buddy was like, hey, we should sell watches. And I was like, Great. Let's start it within 3 months. And we started truly a watch company where we imported watches from Asia and they were interchangeable. So the first name for the company was Swap Watch. Like you could take the watch style and switch it with the strap. You may notice Apple Watches where you can change, right? Okay.

Uh, these, these guys.

Yeah. Yeah. So that, uh, 3-month project turned into 7 years full-time of my life. We did sports licensing, we did corporate gifting, like did our own production run. We assembled them in San Francisco. Like I have photos of my, my now almost 9-year-old daughter giving me the middle finger when she was like 3 months old, right? Like that is on a watch. And so it was completely random and I like got into it and I'm very dogged if nothing else, where for 4 years investors like shut it down. There's not a business. And I was like, I can figure it out. And turns out I could not figure it out. Um, and then I had this really cool experience, which was nobody knew what to do with me and I didn't know what to do with myself. Like I distinctly remember interviewing with Facebook where my wife was working at the time for some BD org, which if I'm going to fit somewhere, it's definitely BD. And the guy asked me a question, and this is like a VP, this is the head of, and literally I didn't know how to answer it. And he goes, "I don't think we should move you forward." This is in the middle of my first get-to-know-you interview, like 15 minutes in. I was like, "I don't think I should either." And I was like, "What's the answer?" He goes, "Oh, it's a clean room, like a data room." And I obviously understood this concept, but I never had learned the language. I was arguing law 2,000 years ago and didn't speak Latin. And I ended up spending 9 months literally advising or helping for free about 7 different founders. One was the founder of Boba Guys, the bubble tea company. One was running a jet aircraft company, a small leasing company. And I ended up doing this with my, who became my co-founder, Alex, on an idea he had that we then turned into Passport Shipping. And so it was—

So this was, sorry to cut you off, this was after the watches, before Passport Shipping.

This was 2017. I did not know what to to do. And so for like—

When you shut down the Earth— not shut down Earth—

Yeah, we ended up selling it to Custom Ink a couple years later, but it was like no longer my full-time.

Yeah.

Long story short, like I did not know what, and I ended up spending time with a bunch of founders until I finally found one who I clicked with and an idea that I was like passionate about. And we started building Passport. So I think in terms of the intentionality, I don't know. It's definitely different person by person. Like I love the business of business. You and I could talk about Platter all day. And like, if you're like, hey, like I would truly entertain a role pretty much any company in the world. Cause I'm like, this is just cool. Like if it's interesting people with a big opportunity, like I'm in, cause there's, there's hard problems to solve. Um, and so for me, it's always just been like, am I in love with the co-founder and the business? And if not, I just, I've learned enough not to spend the time going all in. Like there's non-founding roles I've had where I'm just like, should not have taken that role. Right. And it was like, if you're not going to be in charge and be able to set the culture, make sure you're aligned with the culture.

And yeah. And then in terms of when you're actually jumping into a business, like the mindset shift, because I think the other thing is there's a lot of people who have the founder gene where you can't really take that out of them. Again, first-time founder, so can't speak to what happens if there's a world where like it's not this anymore. But like, I have to imagine there's some thoughts that go through your mind, which I think it's interesting because I have other founder friends who I don't actually think they'd be able to like sit still and do more of like a sideline type thing for a period of time because you're always just so eager to— when you're a founder, it's like you always just want to be doing it all the time.

Yeah.

How, how is that like, how is that mental model shifted for you where you go from like being the guy to then being like, I'm okay to sit on the sidelines for a little bit and then jumping back into it? I feel like that's not that common.

Yeah. I mean, I had a couple of stops in between Passport and Arita. It took me a long time to figure out what to start next. I'll just give one example. So I was an advisor to Loop Returns and then they raised a very big Series B and I was like a very small part, like advisor of the fundraise, but like they were crushing it. And then Palma, the CEO, asked me to join to run go-to-market. And I was like, I don't know if I want to run go-to-market. And it wasn't like, it wasn't him, it wasn't a company. It was just like, I need to figure out like, do I really want to do this? Because like it's a real commitment they'd raised. $50 million, whatever the number was, right? In the B. And I ended up coming in as a 1099 on a 6-month contract to run sales marketing partnerships for a Series B company.

That's cool.

I think half a dozen people at the company knew. I think everybody by the end figured it out. And I remember he came to me 4 or 5 months in, he's like, look, the board, if you're going to stick around, you need to switch over to be a W-2. And so the role we'd always carved out was the idea of The title was president, which doesn't really make sense at an early stage company, but it's my go-to title because I am going to run around and it gives me permission to be in different rooms and be like, actually, we're not going to do partnerships this way, or hey, here's a new look at product. Again, you got to be careful when you jump into other orgs, obviously. But I was really happy working there. It was great. I ran sales marketing partnerships and we hired people who were better at sales marketing partnerships. And then it was kind of like the end of the 6 months and then there was an opportunity opportunity to run product. And I like remember the first day I was running product, I met with everybody and I was like, in my house is a product manager who's 100x better than me. So like, I'm not the company's dream head of product. Like, that's what my wife does. And I was like, I know I'm not that good at it. And it was really fun. I got to run it for 6, 7 months until we hired somebody. And then at that point, there wasn't a role. It was like, go run strategy. And I just remember having that discussion, which was like, at a company this size, I don't really know what strategy is. Strategy without product or running go-to-market were appealing, but otherwise I was very happy to fade into the background again. And so I think as a founder, I don't take off my founder hat in terms of mentality, but it's very clear I was not the founder of that company. I didn't pretend to be the founder, but I worked as if I were a founder. It was all-consuming as if I were a founder. And I think for Loop, that was effective. I imagine that would not be effective if I were to go to, you know, 95% of businesses in the world where there's this new guy running around. So yeah, I think it's just like, it's kind of like you gotta fit in directly with that org.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I know that's really interesting actually. I think the biggest part about it is being honest with yourself. I think there's actually a lot of founders who aren't.

I'm a huge pain in the ass.

I also think there, yeah, but I also think there's founders who shouldn't be involved in their own business anymore at certain, at certain thresholds in maybe the same capacity that they are. And coming to terms and being willing to accept that I think is something that not a lot of founders do.

Yeah. It's pretty interesting. I've thought about that a lot. Part of the beauty of the Loop experience was I helped, I ran go-to-market at Passport, just grossly simplify. It was an amazing team, everything, but we scaled very quickly. And then I went to Loop. I had another stop on the way, it doesn't matter, but eventually made my way to Loop. And at that point it was over $10 million ARR and I was like, oh shit, I can actually do a higher number. And there are certain skills that I definitely did not have to do that. Again, I wouldn't have been the dream CRO, CMO, head of partnerships, whatever it is, but I could do enough to do damage in each of those and then get really good people working in there and run that way. And I think with Arita, one of the things that's been a nice blessing is we've brought on a couple folks who are just not like older, younger, it doesn't matter, but just like way more diligent, detail-oriented, operationally focused where like, and I think I've been comfortable saying like, I can do all that stuff. Like I started my career in consulting. I can go build a really great PowerPoint and like go, go really deep on a topic. I just don't want to. And I'm like, if you guys can take everything I'm saying and make it much better, like that is way more valuable than anything else I can do. And I think actually finding that about me, giving up a lot of the Legos in that regard has been really useful.

I mean, time will tell with Arita, but, um, what do you think most early-stage founders get wrong about go-to-market?

Uh, man, I think, I think the biggest issue— I don't think it's just founders, I think it's teams— is you start building in Excel and you start building a pipeline and you do HubSpot and you're like going percentages and you're looking at your funnel and you're like, okay, cool, well now we've got to do a drip campaign and, and, but we're going to reach out to people who've churned, whatever it is. Is you look at the numbers and you come up with a scalable program instead of just picking up the phone or sending an email or going like hand-to-hand combat. Because when you're an early-stage founder, the next incremental deal really matters. And instead of like building a system, go try to close that one deal. And I think if you get into that habit, and I think that's where we're finding ourselves, is we started scaling nicely and then we started thinking much more systems-oriented. And now it's like we're all hands on deck We're bringing in the next deal. We're doing everything possible to onboard them really well. So it's not like a leaky funnel and we're picking up pace again. And what's happening is warm introductions, right? A good job for a brand begets a warm introduction to another brand. Yeah, I think people think about scale instead of like, I'm going to butcher Paul Graham, right? But it's like, do things. I think it's do things that don't scale. I think founders move away from that way too early.

Interesting. Yeah, they— it's almost like you want to manifest being at the next phase of like scale, so you start doing systems when you shouldn't.

Yeah, one of our investors is Brian Sugar, um, and like Lisa Sugar and Krista and Will from Sugar Capital. And he basically reprimanded me on a call not too long ago where he was like, you've done this before, you know what good looks like, you're on chapter 3 of this business in your head, but you're on chapter 1 right now. Like, basically slow back down was kind of the takeaway. And I was like, it's a good way to put it. I'm very impatient and I know where we should go and I'm getting frustrated we're not there yet. And in retrospect, I think this is where my like 7-year-old gets it from. Just like, can we please speed this up?

Yeah, but don't you think that's part of what allows you to actually find the success that you do? I think like, because I feel like I'm the same and it's almost like a personal problem where you're always like, at least for me, it's like you're anxious because you want everything done yesterday and that's just like a perpetual feeling that you can't escape. Yeah. But that, like, the analogy I'll give you is Elon Musk has some form of a quote about this where it's like, if you try to accomplish your 10-year plan in 1 year, you probably won't, but you'll probably get a lot further than if you try to accomplish your 1-year plan in 1 year.

Yeah, I'm bought in. I think the challenge is like, are you bringing the team along with you or you're frustrating people? Are you empowering your team? Are you giving them the opportunity? Like, are you pace-setting or are you being a jerk? I think is one. Way to look at it. In terms of setting ambitious goals, I used to be on the board of an organization in San Francisco that serves homeless youth. It's an amazing organization called Larkin Street Youth Services. I just remember being in meetings where you'd be setting a fundraising goal for the next year. I'm going to make up the numbers here because it doesn't matter, but I was like, "Cool, our goal is $10 million." And I'd be like, "Guys, why don't we make our goal $16 million?" Because if we start dreaming about the $16 million and we'll miss, Maybe we can get to 11 or 12. So I'm very much bought in. I do think when you're building the scaling org, at least for myself, I definitely can find myself sprinting, but if I haven't brought everybody along or been like, hey, look, I'm going to sprint and here's why I'm sprinting and here's where we're going. So go at your pace, but this is the destination. Then you're just creating frustration because it feels chaotic to everybody else. In my own head, obviously it's a perfect plan.

And then my other question for you about go-to-market is like, how do you think about testing in terms of like channels and figuring out like where is the most efficient place for you to spend your time with acquisition? Because every business has different channels that end up working.

Yeah, dude, you gotta throw a lot against the wall. Again, we're talking, it depends on how early, but we're talking like before, let's call it $2 or $3 million ARR. So it's like truly early stage and let's call it B2B. I know much more about B2B than B2C.

Yeah, same.

So I think you don't know what you don't know. And so you've got to try a bunch. But I think this is where if you're the founder, you need to be the one who's there. You don't need to do all the work yourself, bring people along, but understand what's happening in every call. Are you trying partnerships? Are you doing some SEO stuff? Are you doing a podcast? Are you doing events? Are you doing dinners? Are you whatever? Outbound. And I think you'll have a better sense of what is repeatable and scalable. The thing that I think a lot of people go into is partnerships. And the framework for partnerships is, does my existence make my partner's company more money and my partner's company's customers happier? Because if the answer to those is no, I should not try to be partners. We should be friends and I should do you a solid and make a warm introduction to a brand and vice versa. I'm like, Great. But we shouldn't be sponsoring events together because it's like there isn't actually a natural fit for our businesses. And I think people do a lot of like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're buddies now, we're friends, or we like each other in partnerships. But it's like the goal is yes, for people to like you. But if people like you and you don't drive pipeline, who cares? I do have a very strong opinion that like at the early stages, you should hammer one channel. And if it works, keep hammering that channel. Try very hard not to get distracted. So it's like, go abroad, try a bunch of things, place a bet. Within 2 months, the bet's not paying off. Cool. Switch gears. But like for us, partnerships works wonders.

Is that your main focus in terms of channel?

100%. Like I, the first thing I did, right? I, I kind of told you, I, you know, wasn't like the original founder of this. DB and Zach had closed maybe a dozen customers, like really low price, but like Made by Mary, Italic, Caraway, like real brands. Right. Um, I mean, amazing companies. Uh, And I remember telling Zach, I was like, yo, I need to try selling this product right now. 'Cause I'm gonna fail. So let me just like try. And I reached out to 3 brands at 3 agencies and everybody was excited to chat. We didn't have price, like I was figuring it out, but like, and I realized very quickly that this actually like Arita's existence makes email and growth agencies more successful. It's like brand chooses Klaviyo, replace Klaviyo with any other platform, right? Um, chooses agency for creative and strategy. And then we're like the math guys to the side that give you a better list. I'm like, we'll help you make more money, full stop. And so agencies really liked us because they're like, we don't have ML engineers on staff. And so they might be seeing tens or hundreds of brands. We get to see thousands. So it's like, we're going to have a broader data set and better engineers, ML engineers to solve it. And so the first hire we made outside of the founders is actually this woman, Megan Blisick, who's been just amazing with agency partnerships. I mean, so much more, but That was her specialty. And, uh, like I switched our hiring process around once it started to work. And then we very quickly like hired someone, Diana, kind of to work with Megan. And like the next up-go-to-market hire honestly will probably be partnerships because like it just works. It's like, why are we gonna diversify now their stuff? Like there are more agencies, we love working with them, they love working with us. We get to solve harder problems for brands. We get to be part of like their go-to-market. It's wonderful.

You've been in the commerce industry for a long time now. I want to zoom out for a second and talk more from like the macro. Where do you— what are like the biggest trends you see in the space? Where do you think it's going? And then the other thing I want to talk about is just this notion around like the venture ecosystem in commerce. Like there has not been that many unicorns and outsized success stories in this space. Yet it seems to me that there's still plenty of people who are like bullish on deploying a shitload of money into it.

Yeah.

What is your personal perspective on that?

On that piece? I don't know if people are bullish at the Series A. I think people are bullish at the pre-seed and seed because they get excited about ideas. It's cool, right? And like you could start scaling quickly. The question is going to be like when you get to $10 million ARR, are you going to keep all those customers? Can you get from 10 to 30 or 50 or 100? Um, I think for me, I used to believe you could build a public company on the Shopify Plus ecosystem, but I was like coming up watching Klaviyo and then Yapo and Gorgeous and loop. And I was like, okay, cool. This is how you do it. And I now believe like, yes, you can still do that. But like what's happening in the ecosystem is it's easier than ever to build. And so you have a lot of people who are building cash flowing apps, not like, let's go raise a bunch of money and go hire a ton of engineers. And so like a lot of the differentiation is getting competed away. And so you'll have like, I think a lot of very successful entrepreneurs. I don't think you'll have a ton of like very successful venture scale entrepreneurs. Which isn't good or bad. I just, but I think if you build a business where commerce is your first vertical and you move outside of it, it's still wonderful. It's like for us, we help Caraway with their email marketing, right? We just signed out Evereve. So we're going to help them. And UPS does email marketing. Instacart does email marketing. Like the entire world does email marketing. If we are better at telling you, is Ben going to open this email? Yes or no? Brands will work with us, companies will work with us, governments will, we will just be more effective. And so we have a very big vision outside of it. I think when I see, because I still see a lot of early stage companies and I'm an LP in a bunch of early stage commerce funds, I think it's rare that it's, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're just Shopify ecosystem or commerce, which is Shopify ecosystem, commerce ecosystem is my vision, full stop. I think that's hard. I think it's okay to be an angel in it. I think it's very hard to be a venture founder, a venture investor in that.

Yeah. And I also wonder, 'cause there are founders that we both know who've raised a lot of money that are, at least when they raised, were very much Shopify and then probably start to think like, okay, it's actually not gonna work now. So now I need to figure out how to like appeal to other audiences.

I think it also depends on what you're doing. Like if you're building in the logistics or supply chain space, life-changing stack. Awesome. Huge space. If you're building in the cart, I don't know. It's easier than ever to compete in that space. Yeah. If you're finding me new customers and you're actually building it in a differentiated way, or again, our story, and again, this is our story, but we think we have a differentiated way to help you make the most out of your existing list. We're not helping you go acquire new ones. We're like, you've acquired Jenny, If you want a shot at like winning her as a customer, repeat customer, you should use our models. Right. Um, I think when it's like growing the top line or like really making the bottom line more impact, um, sorry, like, uh, making the like operations logistics supply chain much more efficient to grow profitability. Cool. I think everything in the middle is just like, it's hard, man. It's competitive. I think it's awesome to be a brand builder today because you can go like app to app to app and just keep negotiating. I mean, for sure, right? It's just getting better. The experience was much better than when I was building my company in 2010.

Are you bullish on e-commerce in general over the next decade?

Yeah. This is going to sound really dumb. I don't know from an investment or not, but just in general, it is very hard for me to believe 10 years from now there aren't going to be more online transactions than offline. It's not going to keep growing. It feels it's on an inexorable path. I think there will be very cool innovations like, uh, you know, Thursday Boots is around the corner from here. They will fulfill from stores. Like, they'll maybe— there'll be like many, many, many more micro warehouses, right? Ohai was doing this, and everybody's playing around with this in some way. But I think that's just going to get better. Same-day delivery is getting better. Return pickup and exchange is getting better. Like, this is all happening in fits and starts, but yeah, very bullish on commerce.

What about Shopify?

Super bullish. It's the one stock, individual stock, that I own that is not, uh, like, not Meta or Suez.

Yeah, I mean, you're a commerce founder. I feel like you— if you're like, oh, I shorted this company, they're like, all right, then what are you actually building?

I'm, I'm very bullish. Um, I think that also means that it's like, it can be really hard to be a builder in that ecosystem.

Uh, on the brand side or software side?

On the software side.

Not because of, because of us.

Yeah, I mean, there's— their job is to make amazing for brand owners. I used to be a Shopify merchant. It's awesome. It was awesome 15 years ago, 10 years ago. It is way better now. And then you've got this amazing ecosystem of agency partners and you guys, there are amazing tools that are out there. The hard shit should be building a brand that actually resonates and building the actual physical products that are great, that people love for a niche. Everything else should be easy. It's like, why are we differentiating on, oh yeah, you've got to spin the wheel. I've got a better spin wheel. It's like all things being equal, Like I'm excited for the world where it's just like everybody gets to find the brand that they love at like a quality price point that they love. And like they just get to explore those products and not feel like they're getting duped or not feel like it's like hard to go access that.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think, I think on the software side it becomes from a brand's lens, it's like analysis paralysis I think is actually one of the hardest parts for them.

Yeah. I think that's why brands—

Because there's so, there's 12,000 apps in the Shopify App Store. It's like you're new to the ecosystem or you talk to one friend, it's like, okay, so which of these 30 apps should I use that all claim to be doing the same exact thing?

The framework I always have is like what you want to do is be on the shortlist. If I had a friend who was like, hey Aaron, I'm starting a bag company, what should I do? I'd say, well, definitely use Shopify. And like at the beginning you're going to use Klaviyo, right? And like there are amazing other tools, right?

It's like Yapo is coming up with their, like everybody's coming up with their own business software. I love that.

I actually love the way you— —What is a shortlist? And I'm going to tell you what it was 3 years ago. It was Shopify, Klaviyo, Yapo, Loop Returns if you're going to get into returns, gorgeous, and a couple others. And now it's like, okay, cool. Maybe you replace Yapo with Junip or you replace Klaviyo with Mailchimp or Yapo Email or whatever. It doesn't really matter. I use Postpile for direct mail. There's a very shortlist of apps that you want more people to think about. Sorry, you want more people to think about you as part of that list. List. Um, the other way to do that is go prove yourself time and time again to agencies who are the trusted partner for the brand. Like, I think about— and I'm wrong on numbers— but I think about Gap was 10,000 employees, and Everlane was 2,000 employees, and the next one is 200 employees. And now they're like $50, $60, $70 million brands with 20 employees because it's like, well, we use a 3PL and we use a logistics consultant to set it up. We never even had the expertise in-house, but we found this amazing woman who can help set it up. And oh, by the way, we've got a brand consultant. And like, you use agencies and you scale that way. So that's like, the agency appropriately is like, earn the trust and earn the power to say, yeah, of course, use Platter.

Why'd you not use Platter? Yeah, it's— I think especially now, it's, it's agencies and AI, right? I, I don't, I don't, I don't personally subscribe to the need for this like solo founder $100 million company. I just don't I think, yeah, who cares is my honest opinion. Like, great, you're— says it's like a bad— it's like, do it. It's like a bad— yeah, also true. Yeah, but it's like a badge of honor. It's like, I don't know, I, I don't— I, I like building with other people. I think it's fun. Um, but I think just in the world of efficiencies that are going to be more available, it's like I— the one person I spoke to that talked to me about this was the founder of Create, you know, the creatine gummy brand. Yeah, Dan was like, in the early days, like him, his fiancée, and he's like, my job every day was just like managing 7 agencies. It's like this person did the website, this person did my email, this person did my creative, this person did my paid. And I was just the guy that was connecting all the pieces together. I wasn't necessarily doing one thing very well. I was just very good at finding the people to do all the different things. And I think now with a lot of these efficiency tools coming out, like to be a 10,000-person brand is just not going to be reality in a couple of years from now.

The only ones are going to be the ones that are like huge brick and mortar. But even then, yeah, they're going to use robots. No, no, no, no, no. I'm trying to think. I think it was Relay. I forget what I met the founder. It was really cool. They're in the Sugar portfolio. It doesn't matter, but like, what do they do? You can get like just-in-time staff and you can like help hire that way. So it's like using 1099 instead of W-2, but it's actually like really qualified 1099 staff who will represent your brand well. And so like even that, you're able to scale your brand and like do a brick and mortar presence without—

Oh, HR function. Is it Leap?

Well, Leap Motion does storefronts and they do that. There's, there's somebody else. Yeah, but Leap's awesome too. Yeah, he's a multi-time founder. He also sold a company to Custom Make.

Yeah, he's been around. Yeah. I want to talk to you just about like the founder, the founder mental models, because you've done this so many times. I think it's known that you coach a lot of founders through the period of chaos.

Okay.

Just around like how they think about problem solving and burnout and loneliness and optimizations. Like, what are the biggest lessons you've learned over the course of your own founder journey, and then also from the hundreds of founders that you've talked to?

So those who can't do, teach, and those who can't teach, consult, as we all know. So I burn out, and it's pretty dark. Okay, man, I don't know. I think like number one is like focus is the main thing. Just focus, like one thing at a time. And like you want to do more. It's not like living in the future, like get to chapter 3. It's not even that. It's more just like Are you doing a great job on the thing that matters? Like keep the main thing, the main thing. I think that is just very helpful for a founder. Any, I'm saying a lot of different phrases, but like anything that gets them to be like, what is the problem we're solving? And are we doing a better job at that? And not getting distracted with shiny objects. I think the other thing that has always helped me, and I tend to tell founders is like, whatever your problems are, just share them and share them very publicly, very quickly. Even if you think it's like related to IP or differentiation, for you. Like, you and I could talk about, like, the deepest secrets of Platter, and I'm not going to copy the business, but I might know somebody who actually can help you. And so it's like being really transparent and authentic with the issues you're having, not like a BS way, like, not on, like, LinkedIn, like, it's been really hard to work, but actually be like, hey, this is a concrete problem I have, I don't know how to solve it. Like, people will come out of the woodwork. And I think if you're going to live and breathe your company, like, it is okay to live and breathe it when you're out for a drink or playing hoops or whatever it is. Um, I think those are kind of like two basic ones.

For the second one though, I, I would probably be— argue that it's very contextual, right? Like, there's— you have to withhold a certain narrative to certain people, for better or for worse. Yeah, not necessarily do you have to, but it's like, yeah, you do.

No, that's right. I mean, like, there are things that I'm not saying on this live that you and I talked about before we started.

Exactly. And you're not going on a call with your investors and saying necessarily the same thing you're going to say to your best friend [Speaker:ELLIOT_BISNOW] It's actually pretty interesting.

I will with our existing investors and DB, Zach and I are pretty clear about that. They know what they're getting and we're not going to BS them. I'll tell them when I'm really bullish, I'll tell them when I'm worried. And I'm like, I'd rather you guys hear it today so we can start thinking about it because this is me processing out loud. And by bringing it to Jed and Javelin or Brian and Sugar or Each One a Recursive or Helen at Phenomenal or any of our great investors, they will Help me think through something. And I think you choose investors who you're not afraid of them judging you and you'll be in a much better place. So do I share it with prospective new investors? No. Am I sharing like—

They're gonna be like, oh God, this is red flag. No, I mean, a little bit. You can say what your challenges are just broadly. But like, we're working so hard.

It's like, we're growing too fast. Can we onboard this many customers? Um, but I don't know. I just like, Yeah, I think generally being more open is— I think here's how I put it. The vast majority of founders are very closed. I think if you think about that as a spectrum, you should get much closer to being open with the issues and you don't know who will come out of the woodwork to help you solve it.

How do you think about learning and staying up to date with how fast information moves these days? Do you have podcasts you listen to or mentors you talk to or different methods, or is it just being in the the weeds you feel like you're getting the information you need?

It's a good question, man. I talk to a lot of founders. I'll talk to Hannah at Loop Returns. I will talk to Kyle Hency, who founded one of the founders of Chubbies and then also Loop and then Good Day, which is like a—

Yeah, Kyle's a beast. He's a big supporter of mine as well.

And then, yep, he's amazing. And then like Rishabh from Fermat, I asked him for 20 minutes the other day. He's like, You can come to the city. And I went to the city to meet with him because I had a question and I trust his instinct. And it's not like he's telling me what to do, but even his framing always pushes me. And so I have people who I'm asking. And at the same time, I am heads down on work. I do not worry about competitors or prospective competitors. We then have two young kids. And as intense as my job is as a founder, my wife's job really is much more intense. And so I tuck the girls in every night because she's working. We're on vacation in New York right now and she's working 3 days. I'm working a day and a half and it's just like, yep, I got the girls. You got to do your thing. And so I find that I don't have as much time anymore. I mean, bringing it back to one of the first questions you had with advisees is a couple years ago I started firing advisees and it wasn't because they were bad. It was like, I don't think I'm creating enough value. You should conserve your equity and we're not going to spend enough time together. So cancel my shares or like stop the vesting or whatever it is. And right now I will spend like 5 hours with the founder before I commit to like a long-term relationship as an advisor because I'm just like, I don't know if I want to talk to you in 2 and a half months. I just can't do it.

And what about, I want to talk about life as a father and a founder with a wife who sounds like works more than you do.

And she's more effective. So sorry to my investors and future investors, but like you're backing the wrong spouse.

Sounds like you guys are the dream team to start a company together one day. She builds a product and you sell it.

0% chance. What's hilarious is, uh, I like our, our CMO who just joined, this woman Adrienne, is one of my wife's best friends from business school.

No shit. Is that how you got to her?

I'm assuming it's, it's amazing. So we've been friends for forever and she was like in between jobs. She most recently ran product marketing at Lyft. So like is very, very good. And like at brand marketing at one point. And yeah. Uh, and she was like in between gigs and I was like, hey, do you wanna do some consulting? Would love just like, do these 5 projects with me as you're like, just let's work on them together. Don't get distracted by anything else with the company. She did a little bit of work actually for Passport in like 2017 or 2018. She's amazing. And she's like, yeah, let's do it. And so it was really joyful for a month or 2. And I was like, hey, why don't you like just spend 3 months full-time? And then she spent 3 months full-time, but it was like under contract. And I was like, I know you've got this. She had a job offer from eBay and like a couple other amazing companies. And she's like, I think I'm going to stick around. And so I like talk to my wife about this jokingly. And she's like, if you so much as like get into a fight with Adrienne, you know, there's going to like, she's going to be on Team Adrienne. And so like, I don't think there's a world where we could end up working together.

But what about, I'm curious to know, just like routines or habits or things you've learned about how you spend your time, given that you have two kids and you have to be the one that sounds like spending more time with them. Do you find that having kids has made you more effective as an operator knowing that you can't just dick around until 9:00 PM and then start your day?

I don't know if it's made me more effective. I think just having done this a lot makes me more effective, if that makes sense. I can very quickly figure out if our stories are resonating. It's like I've done half a dozen or a dozen of my own fundraisers and I've advised probably 100 other people's, maybe 50 other people's fundraisers across at least 100 rounds. It's like I'm very good right now in figuring out, oh yeah, the story is wrong. It's like a month ago we revamped our narrative and we've just been scaling really quickly and our product has always worked, but our story didn't. So it's not that I was more focused during the hours I was working. I think just like per unit output is just higher because I'm like maybe getting to the, a better, not the right answer, but a better answer faster. Right now on Friday nights, Sue will put the girls down and I will disappear from dinner at 6:30 and then come up and give them a hug, but I will work until 10:30 and it's really joyful for me because I can just finally process most of the stuff from the week. I tend to travel maybe too much right now. And so I work a lot on flights and that's where I just put my head down and focus. I don't know. I don't think I've changed. I actually think I'm like, I wish I was more effective and more focused and more disciplined than I am. I do sleep a lot less than I used to, but that's just, I don't know why. So I tend to wake up early and then that's when I'll call you randomly on a walk and like, you know, from the West Coast. Yeah, man. I don't know. I wish I had some like, yeah, yeah, I figured it out. In 30 hours I can do 6 hours of work. It's like, I'm just like, I'm still ineffective.

What are the 2 biggest mistakes that founders make fundraising given how many times you've been around this journey?

Most of them probably shouldn't raise.

So the biggest mistake is those who fundraise when they shouldn't.

Yeah. I think I was in that spot too. I think it's not even that you should or should not fundraise. It's you shouldn't fundraise unless you have complete conviction you can get to call it a $100 million ARR business. And you know you're wrong, but I always think about fundraising as if I were to, let's say that you were a VC and we were pitching right now and I were to lay out a plan and you go, and I'm raising Series A, so I need $10 million. And you would be like, Aaron, I will give you $10 million at Pretty good terms, but you have to do everything that is in your plan as written right now. Everything. You can't deviate at all. If I don't believe that that is the absolute best plan I could have at this point, no investor would ever say that. We're wrong about the plan. We're going to learn something new in a week. There are tariffs, there are no tariffs, everything changes. But if I'm not at a point where I have complete conviction that this is the path to get there, I should not be fundraising at that moment. I'm kind of bullshitting somebody and be like, yeah, trust me. Now, if I can look you in the eye and be like, I actually don't know. I know how to get us to 10 and I have complete conviction on that. Do you want to be on this journey with me? Great. You make that decision and have that discussion. So I think the first one is just most people raise before they're ready because metrics say they should or it's cool and you're like, I can go get it. We've talked about this, but the goal is not to raise money. The goal is to return money. Right. So cool. I think what is another mistake? I mean, maybe much more tactical is letting one fund get ahead of others. Run a process, assume you're going to have 100 meetings, schedule 100 meetings, not all in one day, obviously, but maybe you get it done with the first fund. But if your best friend is a VC and she is meeting with you, unless there's another fund that's involved, she's not going to write you a term sheet, no matter how good the offer is, no matter She was like, truly, you grew up together, best friend, couldn't— like, somebody you trust more than anybody else in the world. You need to run a process and build a competitive dynamic or you won't be able to raise.

Yeah, because FOMO is the name of the game. It's annoying, but it's true. I really do think that a lot of venture, not all, is groupthink. Half the diligence for a lot of investors is like, do other people even think this is attractive before I'm actually wanting to pay attention to do my own diligence on it.

I think, I think that's partially true. I also think it's like, has the founder been challenged enough that he or she is like able to answer questions with a level of depth and like getting to the second order? And if you haven't spent enough time with investors who are thinking about, hey, can I return the fund with your company? And they're asking you those hard questions. Like it becomes very clear to the next investor that like, yeah, you might just be kind of playing entrepreneur, playing fundraiser right now.

Yeah. What would you say, looking back on your journey thus far, has been your biggest turning pro moment? It's the moment in the journey where you feel like you were playing a new game, taking things to a new level.

Uh, you know, I actually think the, like, coming together of Areeda was— it was very clear to me, and I've said this to DB and Zach, and I say this, I'd say this to our investors, and like, hey, what's the outcome? I'm like, look, I'm in this to build a public company. And if there's a stupid offer at some point, you can't be like, no, no, no matter what, we're not selling. At some point somebody makes an outrageous offer and it's in equity, an amazing company, we would get amazing jobs for our team and a good return for our investors. You can't be silly about it. But I actually think there were two things that happened at the beginning. Number one is it was very clear that DB was CEO, Zach was CTO. And I was like, again, as a 3-person company, I was the president of company. And I was like, this is their company. I'm here to help them build. And number 2 was if there was a financial outcome or something at any point that they were excited by, unless it's insane, I'm like, guys, this is way too cheap or something. It's their company. And I think for me, I have run 3 companies. I really like being in charge, not for anything other than I like moving at my pace and building my culture. I think actually being able to step back and be like, I'm so fortunate to get to work with these guys and taking a mentality of do not screw it up no matter what. And now it's like we've expanded our team. Our team is really joyful to work with. It's a bunch of senior folks who are acting as ICs right now. So it's like there's a clear hunger there. I think it's not like putting an ego to the side or something. I think it was just a realization that the point of working is not to just be successful. It's also like, hey, you can really deeply enjoy the day-to-day. And I think I wouldn't say I'd never forget this, but I am— I'm not willing to like kind of burn that at all.

One last question for you, because I know you've built a couple companies. Some have had good outcomes, some haven't. Can you speak to like the experience or feeling of like spending so much time working on something and then coming to terms with the fact that it just like isn't working and not going to work?

I mean, the easiest one to talk about is just Modify, the watch company.

Yeah. Cause you were in that for what, 7 years?

7 years full-time, 2 years part-time after that. Uh, man, I still believe that business would've worked. I think I screwed it up. We were, we did sports licensing very successfully. We did corporate gifting. So like 6 months in, I'd sold $40,000 of watches to Google and $60,000 to Facebook. It's like every employee at Facebook got one of our watches for their 7th anniversary. I still bump into people who are like, oh yeah, I still have that watch. It was like this very cool, you know, the moment, like company gift. Um, we also did print on demand in San Francisco. So like, I could give you, like, we could have done platter watches for like your 10 biggest customers, right? And we were doing that. And we stumbled into like influencer marketing. And so like we did something with this woman, Catherine Lowe, who's, I don't remember, she was on The Bachelor or Bachelorette or both of them. And we did a watch with her design that sold like $50,000 in a day. And this is like 2014, 2015. It was really hard to stop working on that company, literally for 3 years before we did. And we ended up selling it to Custom Ink, but for less than we raised. Every investor was like, dude, you should just stop. And I was like, no, I see it. I see it. I see it. And I still believe both sides are right. I definitely should have stopped. And I tell as many founders as I can, even ones I've invested in, I'm like, hey, you should feel free to stop now or try to sell it or whatever. Don't put your time, forget money, good money after bad, but don't put your time after something. For me, yeah, I don't know. I still believe I could restart that business and do much better having just been able to focus, but it's hard, man. I think about that company every once in a while. I still have a lot of the watches. I bumped into a guy on the flight from the Bay to here the other day who's like actually one of my old investors. He's like, yo, I sold the watch you did one of my kids. And it's like, it was really fun, but I don't know, it's like a breakup.

Eventually you gotta move on. Yeah. Aaron, this has been awesome. I appreciate you coming on the pod today. Fun to chat, man. Thank you. You wanna look at that camera, let everyone know where they can find you, what you're working on?

Uh, sure. Uh, working on arita.ai. We build AI customer segmentation. You can find me on LinkedIn, which is the best of all social networks. I'm Aaron Schwartz. Thank you. Thanks, dude. That's great.